Various fluorinated polymer compositions are known to be useful as treating agents to provide surface effects to substrates. Surface effects include repellency, soil resistance, soil release, stain resistance and stain release, and other effects, which are particularly useful for fibrous substrates and other substrates such as hard surfaces. Many such treating agents are fluorinated polymers or copolymers.
Most commercially available fluorinated polymers useful as treating agents for imparting repellency to substrates contain predominantly more than eight carbons in the perfluoroalkyl chain to provide the desired properties. Honda et al, in Macromolecules (2005), 38(13), 5699-5705, teach that for perfluoroalkyl chains of greater than 8 carbons, orientation of the perfluoroalkyl chains is maintained in a parallel configuration while for such fluoroalkyl chains having fewer carbons, reorientation occurs. Thus short fluoroalkyl groups having 6 or less carbons have traditionally not been successful commercially for imparting surface effects to substrates because of the absence of highly ordered perfluoroalkyl chains at the outermost surfaces.
U.S. Patent Application 2005/0095933 discloses compositions for treating textiles formed by combining a repellent component, a stain resist component, a stain release component, and particles. Various commercially available fluorinated polymers are employed as the repellent component and the particles are inorganic oxides or basic metal salts. The fluorinated polymers and particles are separately added to a solution, and thus represent a mixture of the polymer and particle, which is applied to the substrate to be treated.
The expense of the fluorinated polymer dictates that it be used at lower levels in treating substrates to provide surface effects. However, reducing the level of fluorine by using polymers containing shorter chained perfluoroalkyl groups of six carbons or less has not been commercially successful. Thus there is a need for compositions for treating substrates which impart surface effects including water repellency, oil repellency, and soil resistance, which maintain levels of performance, while using less of the expensive fluorinated component. The present invention provides such a composition.